Spatial Resilience In Social Ecological Systems

Spatial Resilience is a new and exciting area of interdisciplinary research. It focuses on the influence of spatial variation – including such things as spatial location, context, connectivity, and dispersal – on the resilience of complex systems, and on the roles that resilience and self-organization play in generating spatial variation. Prof. Cumming provides a readable introduction and a first comprehensive synthesis covering the core concepts and applications of spatial resilience to the study of social-ecological systems. The book follows a trajectory from concepts through models, methods, and case study analysis before revisiting the central problems in the further conceptual development of the field. In the process, the author ranges from the movements of lions in northern Zimbabwe to the urban jungles of Europe, and from the collapse of past societies to the social impacts of modern conflict. The many case studies and examples discussed in the book show how the concept of spatial resilience can generate valuable insights into the spatial dynamics of social-ecological systems and contribute to solving some of the most pressing problems of our time. Although it has been written primarily for students, this book will provide fascinating reading for interdisciplinary scientists at all career stages as well as for the interested public. "Graeme Cumming, central in the development of resilience thinking and theory, has produced a wonderful book on spatial resilience, the first ever on this topic. The book will become a shining star, a classic in the explosion of new ideas and approaches to studying and understanding social-ecological systems." Carl Folke, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden

In the effort towards sustainability, it has become increasingly important to develop conceptual frames to understand the dynamics of social and ecological systems. Drawing on complex systems theory, this book investigates how human societies deal with change in linked social-ecological systems, and build capacity to adapt to change. The concept of resilience is central in this context. Resilient social-ecological systems have the potential to sustain development by responding to and shaping change in a manner that does not lead to loss of future options. Resilient systems also provide capacity for renewal and innovation in the face of rapid transformation and crisis. The term navigating in the title is meant to capture this dynamic process. Case studies and examples from several geographic areas, cultures and resource types are included, merging forefront research from natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities into a common framework for new insights on sustainability.

Resilience thinking challenges us to reconsider the meaning of sustainability in a world that must constantly adapt in the face of gradual and at times catastrophic change. This volume further asks environmental education and resource management scholars to consider the relationship of environmental learning and behaviours to attributes of resilient social-ecological systems - attributes such as ecosystem services, innovative governance structures, biological and cultural diversity, and social capital. Similar to current approaches to environmental education and education for sustainable development, resilience scholarship integrates social and ecological perspectives. The authors of Resilience in social-ecological systems: the role of learning and education present a wealth of perspectives, integrating theory with reviews of empirical studies in natural resource management, and in youth, adult, and higher education. The authors explore the role of education and learning in helping social-ecological systems as they respond to change, through adaptation and transformation. This book also serves to integrate a growing literature on resilience and social learning in natural resources management, with research in environmental education and education for sustainable development. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Environmental law envisions ecological systems as existing in an equilibrium state, reinforcing a rigid legal framework unable to absorb rapid environmental changes and innovations in sustainability. For the past four decades, "resilience theory," which embraces uncertainty and nonlinear dynamics in complex adaptive systems, has provided a robust, invaluable foundation for sound environmental management. Reforming American law to incorporate this knowledge is the key to sustainability. This volume features top legal and resilience scholars speaking on resilience theory and its legal applications to climate change, biodiversity, national parks, and water law.

This book introduces a new approach to environmental sociology, by integrating complexity-informed social science, Marxian ecological theory, and resilience-based human ecology. It argues that sociologists have largely ignored developments in ecology which move beyond functionalist approaches to systems analysis, and as a result, environmental sociology has failed to capitalise not only on the analytical promise of resilience ecology, but on complementary developments in complexity theory. By tracing the origins and discussing current developments in each of these areas, it offers several paths to interdisciplinary dialogue. Eoin Flaherty argues that complexity theory and Marxian ecology can enhance our understanding of the social aspect of social-ecological systems, whilst a resilience approach can sharpen the analytical power of environmental sociology.

Investigates how management systems and their dynamics can improve stewardship of selected ecosystems.

Reflecting the very latest research, this book provides an in-depth review of the role of resilience in the management of social-ecological systems and the ecosystem services they provide. Leaders in the field outline seven principles for building resilience in social-ecological systems, examining how these can be applied to advance sustainability.

Collaboration across boundaries is widely recognized as a vital requisite for the advancement of innovative science to address problems such as environmental degradation and global change. This book takes collaboration across boundaries seriously by focusing on the many challenges and practices involved in team science when spanning disciplinary, organizational, national and other divides. The authors draw on a shared framework for managing the challenges of collaboration across boundaries as applied to the science of understanding complex social-ecological systems. Teams working across boundaries on diverse social-ecological systems in countries around the world report their challenges and share their practices, outcomes and lessons learned. From these diverse experiences arise many commonalities and also some important differences. These provide the basis for a set of recommendations to any collaborators intending to use science as a tool to better understand social-ecological systems and to improve their management and governance.